While Windows 7 comes with DirectX 11 Microsoft has decided not to offer this upgrade to Windows XP users. Fake bundles of DirectX 11 for Windows XP also took advantage of the situation to spread malware - Various genuine efforts also tried making a Windows XP port of DirectX 10 but are not being actively developed anymore.

To bring some relief to Windows XP users, Microsoft has now released an update to DirectX® End-User Runtime after a long time. This new release features updates to 9.0c and previous versions pushing the build version to 9.29.1973 offering better multimedia and gaming experience on users PC.